Movie review: Sightseers a latter-day Bonnie & Clyde minus the style

Seen here on set, director Ben Wheatley’s black comedy, Sightseers, is an acquired taste but the laughs are there if you can deal with some of the film’s darker elements.

Sightseers

Featuring: Alice Lowe, Eileen Davies, Steve Oram

Directed by: Ben Wheatley

Running time: 89 minutes

Parental guidance: sexually suggestive scenes, violence

Rating: Three stars out of five

Playing at: Vancouver International Film CentreIf you saw the bizarre black comedy Down Terrace a few years back, then you’ll have no problem grinding your gears down for Sightseers, a new piece of pitch-dark humour from director Ben Wheatley.

A road-trip comedy that also features serial killing, Sightseers veers onto the shoulder, shimmies at the precipice and seems destined to soar off the cliff in some fiery homage to Thelma and Louise, but then you remember it’s British — and therefore, less inclined toward melodrama.

This is kitchen-sink terrain, and Wheatley makes it clear in the opening frames as we listen to the wailing sounds of mourning intercut with a route map criss-crossing the British Isles.

We’re in the suburbs with Tina (Alice Lowe) and Carol (Eileen Davies), a dysfunctional mother-and-daughter tag team suffering through a long period of guilt due to the untimely death of Poppy, the beloved Jack Russell terrier who gave Carol’s life meaning.

It turns out Tina accidentally killed Poppy with misplaced knitting needles, forcing her mother to see her as a casual murderer. Fortunately, the love Tina needs is finally at her doorstep as a result of Chris (Steve Oram), a nice guy in a windbreaker and beige pants.

Chris wants to take Tina on holiday in his RV (what the Brits sweetly call a caravan), and desperate to get away from her mother’s controlling, suffocating influence, Tina complies, despite her mum’s croaks of protest.

With her newly knitted, crotchless lingerie packed in the boot, Chris and Tina head off for parts unknown alongside the rest of the tourist pack, but things turn ugly rather quickly.

Chris has a hard time with selfish people who prattle on about their own accomplishments.

He also hates people who litter.

He thinks they are inconsiderate and rude, so when a random passenger leaves an ice-cream wrapper on the floor of a heritage streetcar, Chris is enraged.

He thinks the man needs to be taught a lesson, and seeing him pop into his rear-view mirror behind his gigantic trailer at just the right moment, Chris floors it into reverse.

With the litterbug now safely beneath the back wheel of his caravan, bleeding from a severed carotid, Chris feels a little bit lighter — even if he feigns feelings of deep regret.

Oram handles these little moments by allowing a flicker of contentment to cross his eyes.

It never approaches gloating, but Tina can sense the happy change in Chris, and being the enabling, doting, desperate girlfriend that she is, she tries to make sure Chris can access more of this sticky pleasure.

It’s not long before Tina and Chris emerge as a latter-day Bonnie and Clyde, taking out egotistical blowhards, yuppie pet lovers and random bores one gruesome accident at a time.

It’s definitely not for everyone, but if you can stand the stink of the human condition — as portrayed by a serial killer in beige corduroys and a generic windbreaker — Sightseers will linger in the lobes of your imagination long enough to make you laugh.